Monthly Archives: March 2009

Frankly, I haven’t paid much attention to SXSW in recent years, as the demands of parenting and providing have diverted my attention from the independent music scene. About the best I can do is follow a couple music blogs (Tsururadio, Aquarium Drunkard, Motel de Moka) to get a taste of what’s out there.

This year, however, a project I’m involved in (The Victor Mourning) performed not once, but twice, during the festival, so I did get a bit of a taste of the festivities. Our second performance was a very brief 25-minute set at the Saturday Yard Dog Party; we preceded one of the idols of my college days, Jad Fair, who, along with his brother, David, formed the legendary band Half Japanese, which I guess makes both of them one quarter Japanese? Here’s a pic of Jad from his set:

His cord shorted out very early in his set, so being the consummate showman that he is, he proceeded to play unplugged in the midst of the audience– worked pretty well for him, despite the fact that an unamplified non-hollowbody electric guitar sounds a bit like the rubber-band guitars that we built in our 3rd grade art class, but he is Jad Fair, after all. So, quite an honor in my book (although I’m sure it wasn’t intended as such).

In a bizarre footnote, my ex-wife walked into the performance area about halfway through our first song (she was there to see Jad, not us). I hadn’t seen her in about 6 years, and considering that my actual wife was in the audience, too, it made for an interesting experience 😉

I’ve spent the past few days watching German television coverage of the school shooting (Amoklauf) in Winnenden. The Germans have the dubious honor of being second only to the US in the frequency of these types of acts, a fact not lost on the commentators and reporters covering the shooting, and having lived in Germany, I suspect it has something to do with the level of societal repression found in both countries. Availability of firearms may also be a factor, although I don’t really have any solid evidence to support this with respect to German law (it’s worth noting that the perpetrator’s father is a gun freak, and the weapons and ammunition used in the shooting came from his stockpile).

On the other hand, the sober, serious coverage of this incident in the German media stands in stark contrast to the hysteria and “slow down to gawk at an accident” style that we’ve become accustomed to in this country. Whereas the sensationalistic circus goes on here for weeks afterward, when I listened to my daily Deutsche Welle podcast on the way home from work today, I was surprised and rather gratified to find that there wasn’t a single mention of the incident. This is not to say that there isn’t continuing discussion of the shooting as the country tries to come to grips with the horror of Wednesday (there is); however, it’s somehow reassuring to see that the grownups in the German media recognize that this event, horrific as it is, is not something that will have a long-lasting and fundamental impact on German society. It’s an aberration.